Jokara
Jennifer Wilkes is a newcomer to Gotham. She is an expert stuntwoman who goes by the name Jinova Wilkes. Jokara is an unknown vigilante, new to Gotham, who is incorrigible for making trying to make a humiliating display of anyone with whom she engages in combat. Background Jennifer Wilkes was found when she was, she thinks, five years old wandering the Karnali zone of Nepal in the tattered garb of an elementary school student. She was near-dead from exposure and covered in abrasions, cuts, and contusions. She was also unresponsive. It was her good fortune that she was discovered where she was, because only two valleys over she'd have found herself in the hands of robbers and thieves. Instead she found herself in an unregarded, Theravada monastery in the middle of nowhere, a dozen kilometers from even the nearest tiny village (Kharchin). She never did recover her memory of the time before she was found. She knew and knows nothing of her parents or other family. Even her name isn't known; "Jennifer Wilkes" was hand-written on the waistband of her skirt and merely assumed to be her name. Investigations, however, never established her nationality nor her point of origin. No "Wilkes" family was reported seeking a missing daughter anywhere at the time, nor was there any such family itself reported missing. She was taken into the monastery, despite being a girl, out of pity and out of fear for what the wicked world around her would do to one such as she. The monks of the monastery ran a boarding school to teach the boys of surrounding villages and simply adapted to teaching boys ... and one girl. 'Monastery Life' With a combination of the history of Theravada Buddhism in Nepal and the proximity of China just across the nearby border, the monastary was a martial one. It taught a very eclectic mix of martial arts from India, China, and, indeed, via guest masters, as far away as Japan or Korea. Aside from getting a surprisingly good (for the venue) grounding in elementary education, all students at the monastery received basic martial arts training. The masters, however, on top of all that, spotted the students with an aptitude for martial arts and those students, Jennifer included, now going by the name Jinova, as well as her arch-rival Ajraj, an older boy who'd been at the monastery a year longer than Jennifer. These extra students were brought up to excel at the martial arts of various styles, learning to meld them into a single, coherent whole unique to the strengths and weaknesses of each. Having little opportunity to socialize properly in an all-male venue (and indeed being often treated as little more than a scullery maid and cook, not out of malice but out of complacency), Jennifer would frequently wend her way to Kharchin (to the intense disapproval of her master) to hide out in the VCR shop in the village, watching old movies. Old comedy movies. And while at the monastary her older arch-rival was making her life Hell in sparring and trial matches, using his superior strength and superior training to embarrass her, despite her progress, she was studying under other masters: masters like Hill, Grant, Kaye, Keaton, Chaplin, and the Holy Trinity: Larry, Curly, and Moe. And she studied well, finding ways to incorporate their teachings into the eclectic mix her non-electronic masters had already trained her in. Then came time for a reckoning. 'Master of a New Style' Ajraj pushed it, to be fair. He was lording his superior standing and ability over Jennifer for months now. And in this engagement he decided he would drive her from the monastery, jealous of the attention and "special treatment" she received. The match was brutal and Jennifer was losing. And she was holding back, something her masters noted. Holding back until, finally, just as Ajraj was about to strike the final blow that would have made Jennifer leave the monastery for good something inside of her snapped. The teachings of the comic stylings of her other masters spilled out. Feigning terror she slid and slipped across the blood-slicked mat, flailing her arms wildly in comically-exaggerated terror. The overconfident Ajraj stepped in to finish her off just as she "accidentally" fell to his feet, one flailing arm hitting him by "coincidence" right where it was most tender below his waist while at the same time her twitching body knocked him over to fall to the ground, striking his head against his own bench and knocking him out. Along with most of his teeth. She stood up, all hint of terror and desperation gone, bowing to her masters and awaiting their judgement. After a long period of deliberation they agreed she'd won the match legitimately. This was too much for Ajraj who fled the monastery in disgrace, never to be seen there again. In further deliberations, the abbot and the elder monks decided that Jennifer had introduced an entirely new style, ordering her to name it (in a fit of whimsy she called it Jape-Fu), and then to leave the monastery to test it in the real world and to seek students. Within a year she was gone, with the blessings of the abbots and her friends, to seek her fortune and to promulgate her new style of fighting. 'Superheroism' Jennifer found out a few things in her subsequent wanderings: 1. The world is a very large, very confusing place for one with her limited exposure to it. 2. Being so large and so confusing, a resourceful person can always find a way to move around even when unencumbered by such niceties as "citizenship" and "travel documents" and even "knowledge". 3. Not a lot of people are interested in a combat style based on slapstick humour. 4. The world can change around you completely without you even noticing if you're unfamiliar with it. 5. Some people use humour for evil. That last one deserves some more coverage. After a few years of travel she found herself in Gotham and, to her dismay, discovered, in close quarters, the comedy stylings of The Joker. The thought that someone would use humour to commit acts of evil and harm astonished her. And witnessing the Batman ending Joker's plot inspired her. She, too, decided to become a costumed champion of justice, working in Gotham and neighbouring territories, fighting evil and working her way up to be good enough to face the Clown Prince of Crime himself. And thus was born JOKARA (Nepali for "clown"), humiliator of the wicked, scourge of all who have even an iota of self-respect. Personality *'Focused' - Jennifer, aside from five years of childhood she has no real memory of, has always been a ward of a monastery and her life has always been affiliated with monastic discipline. Ironically, given her style of combat, she is humourless and dedicated in whatever she does. *'Righteous' - Jennifer has a very strong sense of morality and will not do evil even if pitched as being for the "greater good". To her way of thinking there is always a moral way out. *'Funny' - While very focused in what she does, when she's not doing that she has, due to her tightly-focused study of it, a very exquisite sense of physical comedy that she puts to good use for a living. Logs *TBA Gallery Category:DC Original Category:DC Hero Category:Gotham Category:DC Taken